It’s not often an author can dip into a stockpile of over 20 novels and pick three that a book publisher wants to publish. Such is the case with Sheri (Mathieu) Boeyink, a 1995 alumna who recently had her first book published.

Boeyink’s pen name is Lynn Rush. Her debut book, Wasteland (2011, Crescent Moon Press), was released last month. “While I was working onWasteland, my publisher asked if I had any other stories I’d been working on,” said Boeyink.

Quite a few more, as it turns out. “They told me they’d like to see more of my stories, so I sent them Violet Midnight. She read it and the next day I got a short e-mail telling me she was drafting a three-book deal. Within two hours I had a contract.”

She has written 23 books, a staggering amount for someone so new to writing.

“I was unemployed for eight months, and you can pound out some serious wordage,” she said. “I have no kids, so I have plenty of time to write. Not everyone has that luxury.”

She writes paranormal romances for the new adult market. “Young adult is hot right now, and that’s for readers under 18. An emerging new audience is young adult, for those 18 to 24. Most of my writing is for that age range.”

She is, obviously, prolific. She has a part-time job at the Christ Church of the Valley church bookstore in Peoria, Ariz. When she’s not working there, she’s writing her books.

“I only write one at a time, but I do edit a couple of them at a time,” she said.

She “jumped into the writing pool for real” in 2008. Since then, she’s consumed with her writing, and feels the new adult niche fits her work nicely.

“I never grew up wanting to be a writer,” said Boeyink, whose SMSU degree is in psychology. “I didn’t even like to read recreationally. In 2007, I read This Present Darkness. That seemed to trigger my writing. There had been a story in my head, and it took root.”

From there, she began educating herself about being a writer, and the business of writing. “I took classes, went to conferences. You don’t hear of many writers who hadn’t written before. Mine is a different story,” she said.

The pace of the process surprised her initially. “It was so slow,” she said. “And agents. Some don’t want to look at you unless you have accolades, and they take months to get back to you. So I said ‘That’s okay.’ I’m a good writer, so I’ll just sit and write books.” She met her husband, Charlie Boeyink, when she was an SMSU freshman. “We didn’t start dating until May of 1997, our junior year,” she said. Charlie has a chemistry degree, and works now for Arrowhead Physical Therapy.

She worked as an escrow officer for eight years before being laid off. It’s then she got the idea for Wasteland. “It was a sense of being out of control, dealing with something you didn’t want to deal with, something beyond your control. That oozed into that story.”

Both Sheri and her husband love the outdoors. She enjoys mountain biking, and Charlie is training for a November full triathlon. Today, she looks back at her time at SMSU and smiles.